Described herein is a pre-vegetated vegetation element for greening of artificial or natural surfaces.
Vegetation elements are used for greening of artificial or natural surfaces such as, for example, roofs of buildings and tramways. Vegetation elements may comprise a vegetation carrier consisting of natural fibers such as coconut. However, the vegetation carrier of natural fibers will rot quickly, generally even before the vegetation has grown sufficiently to the level that the pre-vegetated vegetation element can be harvested and transported to the surface to be greened.
Therefore, the use of such vegetation elements comprising a vegetation carrier of natural fibers is therefore limited to applications where the vegetation is allowed to grow at the surface to be greened. However, growing of vegetation requires a considerable amount of care-taking such as, for example, watering and fertilizing, which is preferably performed in a greenery to achieve higher production efficiency. Considerable costs are involved when personnel of the greenery has to visit each separate surface to be greened, such as roofs of high-rise buildings. When the surface to be greened is a tramway, not only high costs are involved for care-taking during growing of the vegetation element, but there is also an increased risk of collision of personnel with a tram.
When the vegetation element is to be applied on an inclined surface, such as, for example, an inclined roof or an inclined wall of a building, the vegetation carrier of natural fibers will lose its mechanical strength due to rotting before the vegetation has grown sufficiently to give some integrity to the vegetation element, and as a consequence, there is high risk that the vegetation element loses its integrity and (part of the) material of the vegetation element will slide down on the inclined surface, or will even fall off the roof or wall of the building.
Vegetation elements may also comprise a vegetation carrier consisting of synthetic fibers such as polyamide-6. However, these vegetation carriers are not bio-compostable, which means that at the end of the lifetime of the vegetation element, the vegetation element has to be disposed of, for example by dumping the vegetation element in a landfill, which is not only expensive, but also a waste of valuable material. Alternatively, the grown vegetation and the substrate may be separated from the vegetation carrier, for example in an additional mechanical process, and be disposed separately, resulting in considerable costs at the end of the lifetime of the vegetation element.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,965 B1 discloses a plant growth sheet structure provided with plant protection projections to protect the growing vegetation, the structure being made from polyamide, polypropylene or polyvinyl chloride.
DE 102010007552 A1 discloses a vegetation element comprising a quickly biological degrading film which is already decomposed at the time of harvesting of the pre-vegetated vegetation element.